For the cast of “The Conners,” Tuesday’s premiere episode was the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

“We love being together and we weren’t ready for it to end and we didn’t want the stories to end,” Michael Fishman who plays D.J. Conner told Page Six at a premiere screening held during PaleyFest NY.

The cast of the “Roseanne” spin-off, including John Goodman,Sara Gilbert, Lecy Goranson and newcomer Maya Lynne Robinson, were all present for the show’s premiere and spoke on a panel afterward. In the episode, the show’s matriarch, played by ousted Roseanne Barr, dies following an opioid overdose.

“It’s not so much writing out it’s trying to find a way forward,” Fishman told us of Barr’s onscreen demise. “It really isn’t one side against the other, but it really is about trying to carry on this legacy and do it with an honor and a dignity and a real sense of humor that people relate to.”

“The emotions are always complex,” he added.

However, the show received quite the reaction from Barr from afar who tweeted shortly after the show aired on ABC, “I AIN’T DEAD, BITCHES!!!!”

Despite the social media drama, the TV family banned together — with Gilbert as executive producer — to reboot the reboot, and all shared the same sentiment that they were grateful for the chance to keep the show going.

“It was such a gift having our show come back primarily because I got to see these guys again,” Goranson who plays Becky Connor, said during the panel. “To have that taken away from me was so painful.”

“The fact that [the show] was up again and we got another chance, that was the juice for me,” echoed Goodman.

Robinson, who plays Fishman’s wife, said she navigated the set and energy of the cast reuniting with an open mind.

“It’s not negative or positive,” she told us. “It was just change, and sometimes change is hard and sometimes change is uncomfortable, and through that change it brought all of us together which I couldn’t have asked for a better way to kind of get broken into this family.”